Notes about an American election
2.4 | Can Biden’s reading of Saint Augustine and a Jesuit’s invocation for the common good offer us possibilities of hope?
Few presidential elections are so widely followed; and apart from those in one’s own state or country, the run-up to the election of the president of the United States is keenly followed across the globe. This is largely because of the geopolitical and popular cultural influence that the US asserts globally, as much as its penchant for meddling into the affairs of other nation states. However, over the last four years — thanks largely to Donald Trump — the American image has lost its lustre. Worse still, the decline of the American world is palpable as popular international sentiment towards it has shifted from admiration to pity.
A Pew Research study with participants from 13 advanced economies points to how global perceptions of the US have plummeted during the presidency of Donald Trump, and have nosedived further during the pandemic — though the same study points to Trump’s popularity among European right-wing populist party supporters. One must add that such support for Trump has also been seen across other populist right-wing regimes and its diasporas too. This popularity isn’t just about Trump’s charismatic personality but a set of manipulative ideological strategies aimed at retaining power that have now been called Trumpism. The apogee of this movement could be seen in the Capitol riots that unfolded on January 6 in Washington DC.
How did the US reach such a breaking point? I would highly recommend the historian Timothy Snyder’s excellent piece, The American Abyss.
Post-truth is pre-fascism, and Trump has been our post-truth president. When we give up on truth, we concede power to those with the wealth and charisma to create spectacle in its place. Without agreement about some basic facts, citizens cannot form the civil society that would allow them to defend themselves. If we lose the institutions that produce facts that are pertinent to us, then we tend to wallow in attractive abstractions and fictions. Truth defends itself particularly poorly when there is not very much of it around, and the era of Trump — like the era of Vladimir Putin in Russia — is one of the decline of local news. Social media is no substitute: It supercharges the mental habits by which we seek emotional stimulation and comfort, which means losing the distinction between what feels true and what actually is true.
Timothy Snyder
The American Abyss
Do you see similar patterns unfolding elsewhere, or maybe in your own street?
The Trumpian analysis I present isn’t meant to be an uncharitable reading of American politics, but rather to contextualise the need for a better politics of hope — not just in the US, but across our worlds. But this is not meant to be a hope that withers with a feeble sentiment for a better tomorrow, but a hope that needs work — together. This hope would also require, to quote Snyder, a “greater knowledge of the past, fascist or otherwise, [that] allows us to notice and conceptualize elements of the present that we might otherwise disregard and to think more broadly about future possibilities.” In other words, much of the future we hope for depends on how we process our own pasts or presents — of how we have got here, and where we want to go.
The inauguration of the presidency of Joe Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris (yes!) has largely been welcomed with much hope, though amidst fractured times. In the aftermath of the inauguration there have been several people commenting on how they had slept better than the last four years. (You know how envious I am of these people? I am waiting for my own sound sleep!) Are you probably also hoping for some form of sanity to return to your own country?
I have loved following these inaugural ceremonies not only for the cultural pageantry they display, but also for their political undertones. Though this year’s celebrations were very modest, they were nonetheless momentous. On the eve of their inaugural, Biden and Harris had already initiated a healing of memories for victims of the ongoing pandemic: “To heal, we must remember.” But on inaugural day, there was more remembering and healing needed. Apart from those perfunctory statements of call to unity and the promise of a golden age that almost every statesman utters, Joe Biden’s inaugural address did well to borrow from his Catholic heritage. In the run up to this inauguration there had been much wrangling among the US Catholic ecclesiastical leadership regarding Biden’s conformity with Catholic doctrine, but Biden seemed sharp enough to use that very Catholic heritage to signal his politics.
In quoting from Saint Augustine that “a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love” (City of God, 19.24), Biden was referring to Augustine’s definition of what constituted a “people” and “commonwealth”. To paraphrase Augustine, we are what we love. In other words, the object(s) of our love define who we are. Augustine here alludes to the decline of the Roman Republic and its people which he reasons was due to their inferior object of love that comprised of “sanguinary seditions” and “social and civil war.” This is remarkable in how the Roman Republic presages the present abasement of the American republic. Thus Biden’s address now reflects on the common objects of love that (should) define America: “Opportunity. Security. Liberty. Dignity. Respect. Honor. And, yes, the truth.”
While Augustine framed his republic and its peoples in terms of its common objects of love; it was in contrast to Cicero’s idea of the Roman Republic that was premised on the common good itself. Augustine would go still further and define the ultimate object of love as the love of God and neighbour. For Augustine this was a much superior object of love. Interestingly, centuries later, the Jesuits would pick up Cicero’s idea of the common good and give its ministries a civic character — ad civitatis utilitatem. But there was a difference! For the Jesuits its civic thrust for the common good of people was a space and means of incarnating the love of God and neighbour.
These ideas were prefigured in the invocation led by the Jesuit priest Leo O’Donovan SJ, the former president of Georgetown University, a leading theologian and a long-time friend of the Biden family. In 1992, O’Donovan had invited the then senator Joe Biden to deliver a lecture at Georgetown University on how faith informs his public service (seemingly his toughest speech). Leo O’Donovan SJ now serves as the Director of Mission for Jesuit Refugee Service/USA and in November 2020 president-elect Joe Biden appeared on a virtual fundraiser for the JRS where he pledged to raise the annual admission target of refugees to the USA to 125,000, in sharp contrast to the Trump administration’s cap of 15,000 people. In 2018 Biden had penned a forward to O’Donovan’s book, Blessed Are the Refugees: Beatitudes of Immigrant Children (co-authored with Scott Rose and Staff and Volunteers of Catholic Charities' Esperanza Center).
In his invocation, O’Donovan constitutes the American republic as “a people of many races, creeds and colors, national backgrounds, cultures and styles” while appealing to its patriotism to be based on love and the common good, especially towards those most in need.
There is a power in each and every one of us that lives by turning to every other one of us, a thrust of the spirit to cherish and care and stand by others, and above all those most in need. It is called love, and its path is to give ever more of itself.
Today, it is called American patriotism, born not of power and privilege but of care for the common good—“with malice toward none and with charity for all.”
Leo O’Donovan SJ
Invocation at the Inauguration of President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.
Joe Biden’s inaugural address would later invoke his faith, make an examination of conscience of the state of the nation, and recommit to work together towards a “story of hope” for the “public good.” In doing so, Biden presents a politics of hope.
In the course of the next four years, time will tell how Biden’s politics unfolded. However, in the backdrop of this vile Trumpism, I desire for a politics of hope to have its ripple effects across the globe.
To revisit Snyder, such fractured moments of our history can also be a chance. They can offer us possibilities of hope provided that we are willing to give up our fictions and tell the truth. The inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris might seem remote to us — depending on where we live — but a recommitment to truth based on love, equality and the common good offers us possibilities of hope.
Till then, I leave you with this extraordinary poet Amanda Gorman.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we.re brave enough to be it.Amanda Gorman
Rinald D’Souza SJ
HISTORIA DOMUS
Postscript
Postscript
A Tale of two Systems
Angela Ferrão | 21 January 2021
The brilliant cartoonist Angela Ferrão presents the irony of two systems. (A story on the jailed Indian Jesuit, Stan Swamy SJ, will feature on the February 7, 2021 edition.)
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